How to access iCloud photos from iOS device (that does not have enough free space to enable iCloud Photos)

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Level 2

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How to access iCloud photos from iOS device (that does not have enough free space to enable iCloud Photos)

As the title says, I have a 100GB iCloud photo database with ~25K photos. I have iCloud Photos enabled on my Mac, iPad and ATVs and can access the photos as expected. Trouble is, I don’t have enough storage on my iPhone 6s 16GB to even keep 25K optimized iPhoto images.

The optimized thumbs for this database run about 5GB on my phone and it is at its limit. When I take new pics, a message is displayed that iCloud uploading has been paused until more space is a made available. That’s fine but I don’t have it so what I need to do is disable iCloud photos on my phone and upload to my Mac manually. Fine, but then how can I access iCloud photos on my phone?

If if I login to iCloud.com on my Mac, I have access to all the the iCloud Photos as one would expect. But hitting the same url in safari on iOS (without iCloud photos set up) takes you directly to the iOS iCloud setup. Great, but I can’t do that.

Is there any method to access my iCloud photos from my phone (without iCloud Photos enabled) in a browser - or are these just not available?

Very short sided on Apple’s part, not being able to access iCloud photos on iCloud.com without enabling iCloud photos on an iOS device. We need a view only option for those iOS devices not playing iCloud Photis.

☹️

iPhone 6s

Posted on Mar 17, 2019 3:40 PM

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Answer 1

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Demo

Level 10

166,507 points

Mar 17, 2019 3:56 PM in response to MRYFLYGUY

Is there any method to access my iCloud photos from my phone (without iCloud Photos enabled) in a browser - or are these just not available?

You oi need to use a desktop browser ro get to iCllud.com on a mobile device and that is exactly how Apple designed iLcoud.com to work. Many of the web browsers in the App Store can identify as Desktop Browsers and so can Safari.

Go to iCloud.com and the hold down on the reload arrow on the right side of the url field in Safari. Select Request Desktop Site from the popup at the bottom of the screen. That’s will allow you to get into iCloud.com. You may have mixed results once yo get in there, because as I said, Apple did not design iCloud.com to work in mobile devices. Everything that is in iCloud.com should be on your phone already or accessible in one of the apps that uses iCloud so there is really no need to get into the web version.

Very short sided on Apple’s part, not being able to access iCloud photos on iCloud.com without enabling iCloud photos on an iOS device. We need a view only option for those iOS devices not playing iCloud

See my response above. Not short sighted. You are holding it wrong. 😎

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Answer 2

MRYFLYGUY Author

Level 2

223 points

Mar 17, 2019 4:14 PM in response to Demo

Reloading as a desktop site did it. Thanks! I knew I had to be missing something.

As for being able to maintain a large iCloud Photos optimized database on an older phone with minimal storage, it just isn’t possible. A 100gb Deb yields about 5gb optimized dB on the phone. I love extracting tor maximum life out of my devices but some tones there are consequences.

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How to access iCloud photos from iOS device (that does not have enough free space to enable iCloud Photos)

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